Ultima Online Mining - the ore ladder, the smelt column everyone misreads, and the only skill that passes 100 without a scroll

The ore ladder, and the column that changes meaning halfway down

A miner digs mountainsides, cave walls and mining tiles with a pickaxe or shovel, then smelts the ore into ingots at a forge. uo.com publishes two figures per ore — the skill to mine it, and a second column about smelting it:

Ore	Skill to mine	Smelting, as uo.com publishes it
Iron	0	100% success at 75
Dull Copper	65	100% success at 90
Shadow Iron	70	100% success at 95
Copper	75	100% success at 100
Bronze	80	100% success at 105
Gold	85	90% at 105 skill
Agapite	90	80% at 105 skill
Verite	95	70% at 105 skill
Valorite	99	62% at 105 skill

Read the right-hand column carefully, because it is two different things in one column. For Iron through Bronze, uo.com gives the skill at which smelting succeeds 100% of the time. For Gold and above it instead gives the success percentage achievable at 105 skill, because 100% is not reachable at all. A miner at the top of the skill still fails more than a third of Valorite smelts.

Note also that Bronze’s 100% figure is quoted at 105 — above the natural cap. uo.com wrote this table for a miner wearing gloves, which is the subject of its own section below.

uo.com’s mining ladder in one line: Iron 0, Dull Copper 65, Shadow Iron 70, Copper 75, Bronze 80, Golden 85, Agapite 90, Verite 95, Valorite 99. The same ladder governs Blacksmithy — you need the same skill to work an ingot that you needed to mine it [!].

On finding coloured ore at all, uo.com publishes two statements and only one of them is a number: “At the minimum required mining skill, when digging a particular colored ore vein, there is a 50% chance of actually digging up the colored ore”, and “A miner with high mining skill is more likely to find a colored ore vein than a less skilled miner.” [!] How much more likely is not published.

Ore pile sizes, from the same page: two small piles produce 1 ingot; a medium pile produces 1; a large pile produces 2.

105 Mining - the only skill that passes its cap without a Power Scroll

Mining has no Power Scroll. It is absent from uo.com’s Scrolls of Power list, which names only Blacksmithy and Tailoring among the crafting skills. Its real skill caps at 100.0.

And yet uo.com’s own smelt table is written to 105. The reason is a set of Blacksmith Bulk Order rewards:

Item	Published effect	BOD points
Leather mining gloves	“Increases mining skill by 1 point”	100
Studded mining gloves	“Increases mining skill by 3 points”	200
Ringmail mining gloves	“Increases mining skill by 5 points”	450

The consequence: the gloves give +5 to reach a maximum of 105, which makes Mining the only skill that can be pushed past 100 this way without a Power Scroll. That is why uo.com’s smelt column stops at 105 rather than 100 — the official table assumes the ringmail gloves are on.

uo.com also names Jacob’s Pickaxe, which carries a +10 mining boost over 20 uses. [!] uo.com does not publish how that stacks with the gloves, or whether a combined total is capped, and [!] uo.com does not state whether item-boosted Mining above 100 unlocks ore types or only improves smelting. Neither should be assumed in either direction.

Everything else in the rock

Ore is the headline, not the whole yield. uo.com publishes five further products:

• Gems — six gem types, random spawn, at Grandmaster / 100 skill. [!] uo.com names neither the six types nor any drop rate on its Mining page.
• Granite — in all ore colours, weighs 1 stone, stackable. It feeds masonry and Stonecrafting.
• Sand — from beaches and coastlines; 1–10 sand weighs 1 stone, and a deposit usually yields 6–13. Sand feeds glassblowing.
• Saltpeter — from niter deposits, luck-dependent; uo.com notes that Felucca grants a 1000 luck bonus to gathering it. [!] No yield per deposit is published.
• Crystalline Blackrock — Ter Mur only.

uo.com adds that special books, purchasable at roughly 10,000 gp in Royal City, Ter Mur, are required to unlock some of these; granite and sand are the ones those books unlock [!].

One more, and it is the friendliest quality-of-life item in the skill: the fire beetle, a tamed creature that smelts ore into ingots on its back, removing the trip to a forge entirely. uo.com notes fire beetles are available at the pet stalls in New Magincia, so a miner does not need Animal Taming to have one.

Tools, durability, and uo.com contradicting itself

uo.com’s Mining page publishes three durability figures for the ordinary tools:

Tool	Uses
Vendor-bought pickaxe or shovel	50
Player-crafted exceptional	100
High-quality sturdy variant	approximately 180

[!] uo.com contradicts itself on the sturdy pickaxe. Its Mining page gives roughly 180 uses. Its own Blacksmith Bulk Orders page describes the sturdy pickaxe reward as having “either 150 or 200 uses, determined randomly”. Both figures are uo.com’s, on two pages of the same wiki, and nothing reconciles them.

Page	Sturdy pickaxe durability
uo.com Mining	approximately 180 uses
uo.com Blacksmith Bulk Orders	150 or 200, determined randomly

It is a small number with a practical edge: 180 and “150 or 200 at random” imply different things about whether a sturdy pickaxe is worth 25 BOD points against how many trips it saves.

The specialist tools, and what they cost in BOD points

Almost every tool that makes mining faster is a Blacksmithy Bulk Order reward, which is the structural fact about this skill: a miner’s equipment is paid for by filling a smith’s paperwork. Effects from uo.com’s Mining page, point costs from uo.com’s Blacksmith Bulk Orders page:

Tool	Published effect	BOD points
Sturdy pickaxe	150 or 200 uses, determined randomly	25
Leather mining gloves	Mining +1	100
Prospector’s tool	50 uses; boosts the ore type of a resource spot by one level	200
Gargoyle’s pickaxe	100–120 uses; boosts ore type by one level; may summon a hostile Ore Elemental	200
Studded mining gloves	Mining +3	200
Ringmail mining gloves	Mining +5	450
Rock Hammer (500 charges)	Increased chance to dig up high quality granite	500
Golden miner’s map (24h)	Reveals a Golden ore spot	700
Agapite miner’s map (24h)	—	950
Verite miner’s map (24h)	—	1,050
Valorite miner’s map (24h)	—	1,150

The two that change how you mine rather than how fast are the prospector’s tool and the gargoyle’s pickaxe: both promote a resource spot by one ore level, which is how a miner turns a Verite vein into a Valorite one. The gargoyle’s pickaxe pays for that with the only published combat consequence in the skill — it may summon a hostile Ore Elemental on top of you.

uo.com’s Mining page also names the Smelter’s Talisman, the Miner’s map and Jacob’s Pickaxe (20 uses, +10 mining). The tools you actually dig with — the pickaxe and shovel — are Tinkering items at 40.0 [!] Tinkering and 4 [!] ingots each.

What the ore is worth downstream

The ore colour a miner can reach sets what a smith can put on armour and weapons. uo.com’s Material Bonuses page, armour side:

Material	Phys	Fire	Cold	Poison	Energy	Durability	Luck	Lower Req.
Dull Copper	10	—	—	—	—	50	—	20
Shadow	3	2	—	—	7	100	—	—
Copper	2	2	—	7	2	—	—	—
Bronze	3	—	7	2	2	—	—	—
Golden	2	2	3	—	3	—	40	30
Agapite	2	7	2	2	2	—	—	—
Verite	4	4	3	4	1	—	—	—
Valorite	5	—	4	4	4	50	—	—

The weapon side of the same table is elemental damage type conversion rather than added damage, and it is reproduced in full on the Blacksmithy page. The headline figures are Bronze at 40% fire, Verite at 40% poison and Agapite at 30% cold — which is the miner’s practical reason to care which vein is in front of them.

Above those sits the runic hammer, which is named by ore colour and comes from Blacksmith BODs — BODs that only get filled because a miner supplied the ingots:

Runic hammer	Min intensity	Max intensity	Min properties	Max properties	Charges
Dull Copper	40%	100%	1	2	50
Shadow Iron	45%	100%	2	2	45
Copper	50%	100%	2	3	40
Bronze	55%	100%	3	3	35
Golden	60%	100%	3	4	30
Agapite	65%	100%	4	4	25
Verite	70%	100%	4	5	20
Valorite	85%	100%	5	5	15

That is the answer to why anyone grinds to 99. Valorite is the one ore uo.com calls “the hardest to find”, and it is the only route to a hammer that makes five properties at 85–100% intensity. Mining skill also determines ingot return rates when recycling blacksmith items [!], which is a second, quieter reason a smith keeps the skill high.

In PvP

Entirely indirect, and entirely upstream. A PvP character does not carry Mining. A PvP character’s suit does not exist without someone who does.

• Valorite at 99 Mining is the ore behind the top runic hammer — 5 properties at 85–100% intensity, 15 charges — which is how player-crafted gear reaches property intensities Imbuing cannot.
• The metal bonus table is how a crafted plate or chain suit reaches high resistances before imbuing is applied at all. Shadow alone is 7 energy and 100 durability per piece.
• Powder of Fortification, a Blacksmith BOD reward at 450 points, “increases the maximum durability of metal weapons and armor by 10 points per charge” over 10 charges. PvP consumes durability faster than anything else in the game, and this is the item that answers it — and it exists because miners fill BODs.

In PvM

• Feeds Blacksmithy and Tinkering with the ingots behind every crafted weapon, armour piece and tool in the game.
• Gems at 100 skill feed tinker jewellery: uo.com’s Tinkered Craftables page lists the gemmed bracelet, earrings, gemmed ring and the silver, golden and jewelled necklaces all at 40.0 Tinkering with “1 Gems, 2 Ingots”.
• Granite feeds masonry, sand feeds glassblowing, saltpeter from niter feeds the powder and ship-cannon economy, and Crystalline Blackrock is a Ter Mur resource.
• The gargoyle’s pickaxe deliberately spawns hostile Ore Elementals — a mining tool that starts fights.
• Miner’s maps at 700 to 1,150 BOD points reveal a 24-hour ore spot of a named colour, which is how a miner stops wandering.

Caps, stats and training

Mining caps at 100.0 real skill, with the +5 gloves exception described above taking the effective value to 105. There is no Mining Power Scroll and no Mining mastery. It counts against the 720 total skill cap.

Primary stat Str, secondary Dex, per uo.com’s table.

uo.com publishes no stepped training script. An unpublished one [!]:

Range	Method
0–40	Train with Jacob Waltzt (400 gold)
40–50	The New Player Quest “The Delucian’s Lost Mine”
50–100	Mine and smelt ore

uo.com’s Blacksmithy page recommends training Mining first of the pair, which follows from the ore ladder: the ingots have to exist before the smith can work them, and the two skills climb the same numbers in step.

The Guaranteed Gain System sets the floor: a mandatory 0.1 when nothing has been gained inside your bracket’s window, which on a 700-point character runs 15.0 hours at 80.0–84.9, 22.6 hours at 90.0–94.9 and 27.0 hours at 95.0–99.9. A Scroll of Alacrity raises each check from 0.1 to 0.2–0.5 for 15 minutes. [!] No Mining-specific gain rate is published.

What is not published

• [!] Any per-attempt success formula for digging a vein at a given skill, beyond the “50% chance at minimum skill” line for coloured ore.
• [!] How much more likely a high-skill miner is to find a coloured vein — uo.com says only “more likely”.
• [!] Smelt-success percentages at any skill value other than the ones in uo.com’s table (75 / 90 / 95 / 100 / 105). They should not be interpolated.
• [!] Any stacking rule between mining gloves (+1 / +3 / +5) and Jacob’s Pickaxe (+10), or whether a combined total is capped.
• [!] Whether item-boosted Mining above 100 unlocks ore types, or only improves smelting.
• [!] Any gem drop rates, or the names of the six gem types, on uo.com’s Mining page.
• [!] Any saltpeter yield per niter deposit.
• [!] The sturdy pickaxe durability — uo.com’s Mining page and its own Blacksmith Bulk Orders page disagree, and nothing resolves it.
• [!] Any gain rate specific to Mining.

Where these come from

uo.com Mining · uo.com Blacksmith Bulk Orders · uo.com Material Bonuses · uo.com Runic Bonuses · uo.com Tinkered Craftables · uo.com Scrolls of Power · uo.com Skill Masteries · uo.com Skills, Stats & Attributes · uo.com Skill Gain Systems. Everything here is from uo.com or the game itself; anything uo.com does not publish is marked [!] as unpublished where it appears.